The Life (advertisement)

In 1999, Microsoft made the decision to consolidate its marketing efforts with a single advertising agency, after several years of partnership with different agencies for each of its product line. They entertained pitches from each of the agencies on their roster, and ultimately assigned the global account to McCann Erickson.[1] McCann was assigned the task of promoting what would become the killer app of the Xbox, the video game Halo: Combat Evolved.[2] The launch campaign was hugely successful, selling over five million copies of the game worldwide.[3] The success of Halo: Combat Evolved led to a series of sequels and tie-in merchandise including books and action figures.

In 2007, McCann launched a multi-platform global advertising campaign titled Believe, that included six minutes of live-action sequences called Landfall, to promote the latest game in the Halo series, Halo 3. Landfall was directed by Neill Blomkamp who also agreed to direct a full length Halo film, but it was cancelled due to funding disagreements.[4] Believe proved a critical and financial hit.[5] Over £84 million of sales were made on the first day of release alone, the highest-grossing opening sale of an entertainment product at the time.[6] Believe received dozens of awards from the advertising community, including eight Clio Awards,[7] Best in Show at the ANDY Awards,[8] and two Grand Prix (for Film and Integrated campaigns) at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival,[9] the most prestigious awards ceremony in the advertising industry.[10] According to the Gunn Report, Believe was the second-most-awarded integrated advertising campaign of 2008, behind Earth Hour for the World Wide Fund for Nature.[11]

In 2012, due to the success of Landfall and The Life, Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn was created to broaden the audience of Halo 4.[12] Released initially as five 15-minute episodes online, it was later released as a ninety-minute extended cut on DVD and Blu-ray.[13] Microsoft considers it the "next step" between advertising material and a full-length film, and Frank O'Connor, development director for the Halo franchise, has said that a film will be made "when the time is right".[12][14] Live action shorts were also used in the advertisement of Halo: Reach focusing on the Spartan supersoldiers of the Halo universe. Two shorts, The Birth of a Spartan and Deliver Hope were made, again to appeal to customers who were unfamiliar with the series.[15][16]

In early 2009, McCann received a brief to create a new campaign for the latest entrant into the Halo series, a first-person shooter called Halo 3: ODST. It would be the first game in the franchise not to feature the series' protagonist, the Master Chief.[17] McCann returned with a pitch for a campaign in the same vein as Believe, aiming to humanize the soldiers featured in the Halo universe. The project was greenlit, and McCann brought back several collaborators from Believe to handle this new campaign, now given the working title of The Life.[17]

Director Rupert Sanders, known for his work with production company MJZ on campaigns such as Lava for Guinness and Great Return for Nike, Inc.,[18] was given five weeks to produce the commercial, with three days set aside for filming.[17] Several locations were scouted for shooting, with an eye towards an "Eastern Bloc" aesthetic. These included several areas around Chernobyl, Ukraine. However, the tight schedule precluded using locations too distant from one another for different scenes and, in the end, three spots outside of Budapest, Hungary were settled upon: the cooling tower of an active nuclear power station was dressed to act as the backdrop to the opening funeral scene; an open-pit coal mine served as the setting for the battle scenes, and an abandoned aluminum factory was used to stage the closing funeral scene.[17]

Sanders drew inspiration for the shooting style and aesthetic of the commercial from a variety of sources, including news footage from journalists embedded with military forces in Afghanistan, and Russian feature films such as Stalker and Come and See.[17] To keep the details within the commercial consistent with established Halo canon, the creators of the Halo series, Bungie, provided Sanders with information on aspects ranging from appropriate fur color and rank insignia for the Brute, to the armor and weaponry of the ODST soldiers.[19]

With filming complete, MJZ contacted post-production company Asylum to begin work on the substantial visual effects component of The Life. The team, led by Visual Effects Supervisor Robert Moggach, tripled in size as the scale of the work required became apparent, given the deadline of three weeks. Work on the opening funeral scene was relatively easy, requiring the creation of only minor elements such as additional tombstones in the foreground and color correction on the actors. The same was true for the training sequence, where only minimal tracking work and compositing of matte backgrounds was required. The bulk of the visual effects work was in the battle sequence. This ranged from simple work such as wire removal to the creation of dynamic lighting and reflections from visors and armor, to particle effects for the background smoke and dust, plasma weapon fire and alterations to some of the filmed explosions to lend them the appearance given to plasma explosions within the Halo games.[20] The entire background was a 3D projection of matte paintings and dramatic skies. While the Brute was partially animatronic, substantial adjustments such as scaling to almost twice the size and the enhancement of fine muscle movements of the creature were made. Other elements, such as the Banshee aircraft and the drop-pods, were created entirely through the use of CGI. Software used by Asylum FX included Flame and Nuke for compositing, Maya for animation, RenderMan and Mantra for rendering, SynthEyes for tracking, Silhouette Pro for rotoscoping work.[20]

The Life was scored by Gareth Williams, a composer for Human Worldwide. The music, an arrangement of Light of Aidan's "Lament", was created specifically for the ad, and featured a wide variety of instruments. Percussive elements included military snare drums, a hand drum, Samoan log drums and stones tapped against one another. These were joined by a Great Highland Bagpipe and traditional string orchestration such as a double bass and cello. Vocals were provided by Kathy Fisher who, despite not being a native speaker of the language, sang the Welsh lyrics provided by Williams.[17] The song was later expanded by Williams and used in the original soundtrack for King Arthur: Legend of the Sword under the title "Politics and The Life".